Ted Cruz in Iowa: 2016 force or flavor of the month?

DES MOINES, Iowa — Sen. Ted Cruz will give the keynote speech Friday night at Iowa’s Reagan Dinner, riding a wave of attention and sudden celebrity that’s shot him to the top of the pack in the extremely early 2016 sweepstakes.

The early comparison some activists are making is to Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who hung back during the government shutdown and, by comparison, looked more reasonable to some of his party’s leadership and donors.

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Cruz: I don't work for party bosses

But 2012 was the cycle of the rise-and-fall candidate with a base in search of the next Sarah Palin. Any number of anti-Mitt Romneys crashed about as quickly as they took off — Herman Cain, Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum and Rick Perry. The question for Cruz is whether he can sustain his current trajectory — burning bright and fast — without burning out for another two years, until the Iowa caucuses.

Cruz has left little doubt he’s considering a presidential run in private conversations with GOP elite. And despite the damage to his party caused by the government shutdown — which Cruz, as the leader of the damn-the-torpedoes strategy to defund Obamacare, was seen as largely responsible for — the Texan is riding higher than ever with the activist base.

“When you have a Republican senator like Cruz come in and really stand on principle and fight for what Republicans believe in, it really fires up the party,” said Iowa Republican Party Chairman A.J. Spiker, who will host Cruz at the Reagan Dinner, the party’s fall fundraiser.

“I would say, at this point, Cruz’s stock is probably a little higher than Rand’s in Iowa,” Spiker added. “Obviously, you’ll see things fluctuate between now and the caucus, but you saw him take center stage during the fight against [Obamacare].”

Bob Vander Plaats, an Iowa social conservative who’s run for office in the state himself, said Cruz is seen as “a breath of fresh and air, and somebody who’s leading the way [that] he said he would when he campaigned.”

The establishment sees him as a serious threat, Vander Plaats said.

“He’s very bright, he’s very articulate — and he’s very hard for others to debate. And so they resort to calling him names,” he said. “That probably signals to us that he’s doing something right and he’s won the debate. Quite frankly, if the caucuses were held today, he’d lap the field. I don’t know who’d touch him.”

Cruz has made repeated visits to Iowa this year, though he has stayed around the Des Moines area instead of moving around the state. Such travel around Iowa is crucial for any candidate, and some activists privately pointed out that Cruz has yet to do it.

Yet there’s no doubt that the establishment views him with concern, including in Iowa, where officials have worried for the past two cycles about The Hawkeye State maintaining its first-caucuses-in-the-nation status.

Few represent the establishment side of Iowa Republican politics more than Gov. Terry Branstad, who was muted about Cruz earlier this week.

“He’s just one of 100 members of the Senate,” he said. “I don’t think one freshman senator can turn this all around,” Branstad added, referring to the GOP’s larger problems.

Indeed, Cruz’s novice status in the Senate has been derided by some, who see him as showboating instead of trying to effect change.

“I’m sure there’s a lot of folks from the base who are fired up that he’s standing up on principle,” said Brian Kennedy, former chairman of the Republican Party of Iowa. “There are a lot of folks who are wondering whether the strategy and tactics backfired. … Most of us are more focused on ’14 [than] ’16, and hopefully, he is too.”

David Kochel, who was Romney’s top adviser in the state in 2012, said Cruz’s visit reveals the senator’s intentions behind his actions of late: “positioning Ted Cruz” for his political future.

And for all the fire Cruz has come under, he was successful in that regard, Kochel said.

“Even though it was a short term PR disaster for the GOP brand and did nothing to stop Obamacare, he managed to jump straight to the head of the line of the anti-Washington, tea-party rage masters, which is no small feat,” Kochel said. “The faux filibuster, shutdown and ensuing media tour capped off with his Iowa speech is the political equivalent of a 2016 hat trick.”